In the Beginning: Midievalry's goals and the physical battle archetypes

[size=2]Disclaimer: This is a long post. I am not responsible for any eye damage that may occur from straining to read it all.

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Greetings, I'm Patliteon. This blog serves as a source of fun, a motivator for myself, and as an opportunity for anyone to extend some ideas and feedback to me in the comments should they so please. Thank you to whoever reads. All information and ideas in this blog are free to be used should you take a liking to them.

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So Patliteon, What is Midievalry?

At its core this is an auto-battler game. For the actual fighting, you do absolutely nothing except click a button to initiate the fight, similar to how text-based games work. If you haven't clicked the back button on your browser yet then congratulations, allow me to explain the game's charm. My goal in making this game is to do what I have yet to see done: make an rpg style game with near endless skill customization. I can't recall the amount of times I've been disappointed when trying to make my character feel truly unique in a game. There's either not enough options to do so or there's the inevitable small portion of cookie cutter builds that outshine the rest. If there is one goal in this game above all else, it is to make sure that this never happens. And yes, there will be graphics, you're not just reading text the whole time.

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Your head is in the clouds Pat, but I'll humour you. What's your gameplan for customization?

I'm not sure where to start. Let's get something basic out of the way. Customization is as much about limitations as it is about choices. If you can choose to eventually get every single skill in the game, then there's zero customization. So an optimal balance needs to be found in regards to pick 'x' choices out of 'y' total choices. I'll go further into the tediousness of that math on another day. Let's talk about some of the juicy stuff now.

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[color=#ff0000]From this point on you are in game theory land. Read at your own volition. You have been warned. [/color]

The skills in this game are divided into two categories: physical and magic. Good, now give me the award for most creative out-of-the-box thinker. Extremely basic I know, but it's a good place to start for narrowing down choices. I have divided the physical side into archetypes. For now, these archetypes are meant to serve simply as idea sources for unique playstyles to be had within physical combat. Here are the archetypes I've thought of (the inspirations serve only to get the blood pumping):

Physical Archetypes

1) Goliath (Inspiration: Iudex Gundyr from Dark Souls III) : They're the juggernaut archetype. Uses either spears or poleaxes. Farthest attack range of all physical builds. Also potentially the most raw damage. Slowest of all builds.

2) Warrior (inspiration: Arnold from Conan the Barbarian): A wielder of two handed weapons. Primarily uses brute force, but can be customized in many different ways.

4) Guardian (inspiration: classic midieval knights and the Spartans from 300): A wielder of a weapon and shield. They have the highest defense, but can be played either defensively or offensively depending on how they're customized.

5) Tactician (inspiration: fencers, rapier-style fighters, even samurais): A single or dual wielder. The tactician's goal is to know thy opponent. Moreso than any other archetype they seek to gain an understanding of their opponent in order to breach their defenses or parry their attacks and riposte.

6) Rogue (inspiration: classic thief, no real inspiration as of yet): A wielder of fist weapons or daggers (potentially other weapons). They are the most agile of all archetypes and have heavy avoidance. They seek to cause bleed or poison damage to widdle away their opponent while remaining out of touch. But they can also go in for the kill at the body's vital points and inflict some massive damage in deadly acrobatic style.

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Cool beans Pat. So how do you customize these archetypes, and what about magic?

Let's end here my friend. I have the answers to those questions, but this post is getting a little too long for its own good. Let me just say that any form of magic (fire, ice, lightning, holy, dark, etc.) can be mixed with any physical archetype. Or you can choose to stay solely physical or solely magical. In order to properly explain all this, I will need to go over the stats of this game (think strength, dexterity, etc.) and the resources of this game (think mana, energy, rage, etc.) Thank you again for reading if you made it this far. I know this may seem like random ramblings, but in the next post my vision for customization will become more fleshed out. It's just late and I don't want to overwhelm this one post with too much info.

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Geez Pat, way to leave me hanging. Is that it?

No, I would like to end my posts with questions for the reader. You've been so kind as to read through all of this, now it's your turn to shine. My questions for today's post are:

1) Can you think of any additional physical fighting archetypes I haven't thought of (preferably weapon-based)?

2) What are some of your favorite inspirational people/characters when you think of battles?